Does Internet Explorer’s falling market share mirror the drop in US homicides?

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There’s all kinds of information available on the internet… and what’s the point of having access to all that information if you can’t compile it into hilarious charts and share them on your Twitter feed? The latest example to go viral is “Internet Explorer vs. Murder Rate”.

As you can see, there appears to be a very interesting correlation. But what is that correlation? Has the U.S. population become more willing to try alternative browsers as the number of homicides drops? Or is it the other way around, and fewer people are committing murders because they’re no longer using Internet Explorer? If you’re going purely for maximum chuckle output, it’s got to be the latter. There is, of course, another possibility: people may have been systematically killing Internet Explorer users.

But as most geeky types know all too well, correlation does not imply causation. In this particular case, the apparent correlation doesn’t even indicate an actual correlation. There are some technical issues with this chart, like the fact that the scales of the two data plots aren’t the same. Then there’s the slightly larger issue of data that seems to be highly inaccurate.

If you post a chart on the Internet, someone will dissect it. Possibly someone who figured out how to outsource his entire job to China, though that wasn’t the case this time. Turns out an accurate comparison of the murder rate (a more appropriate choice to compare than the gross number of murders) lines up differently with Internet Explorer’s market share.

Once again, the Internet has given us all a good laugh only to crush the source of our joy underfoot moments later. But hey, there’s bound to be another hilarious chart posted tomorrow.